<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Still waters run deep by JayTheCappy</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27429058">Still waters run deep</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayTheCappy/pseuds/JayTheCappy'>JayTheCappy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>MS Paint Adventures, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Other</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:35:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>745</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27429058</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayTheCappy/pseuds/JayTheCappy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Deadeye Detective very quietly and coolly has an panic attack.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Still waters run deep</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A fun fact I have learned through first hand experience is that if you dissociate hard enough panic attacks won't feel anything like panicking. They're just exhausting.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You are not a man predisposed towards emotional outbursts. By the talk you frequently hear swirling in your wake like the eddies marring an undisturbed lake, you may not have emotions at all. It’s a notion you have taken great care to plant in the minds of those around you, tending it as often as you must to ensure that its snaking vines ensnare all who cross your path. In truth, it takes little effort on your part. A composed, unimpressed demeanor on the scene of a grisly murder or six will do wonders for your reputation, you have found. And so you stand, a machine of a man, towering cold and untouched over those emotional human creatures.</p>
<p>It is a lie. Every word of it, down to the letter. You are, if anything, weaker than them for your refusal to acknowledge that fact. The thought haunts you as you sit in your home, staring idly at a wall. While it is true that for you, emotions come rarely, it seems they are all the stronger for the time without them. There are those that are tolerable, waves of sourceless joy that leave you near breathless with the need to express them, weaving down your spine and through your limbs with a vast energy unlike any other you could name. Even anger you can control, can direct to useful, if destructive, tasks. When these moods take you, there is little you can do but hold yourself in and wait for them to pass, the sheer power of them leaving you drained each time. You have never been one to do things by halves, you suppose, dragging your uncooperative body to its feet and making your way to your bedroom.</p>
<p>It is a kind of sadness, this time, aimless and destructive, clinging to your limbs like a prisoner’s chains. You make it to your room, latching the door before you sit at the edge of your bed. You are uncharacteristically hunched, as though anticipating some brutalization from an unseen attacker. The pose makes your back ache, a slow-building burn that blooms up the length of your back, but you do not move. It’s too much effort to move. You are not strong enough, not in control. It is that thought that catches you, clawing through your every defense to settle in the pit of your stomach like lead.</p>
<p>You are not in control.</p>
<p>You have never been in control.</p>
<p>You never will be in control.</p>
<p>Your facade is meaningless and paper thin, a guise so easily lost. You sit here, hunched and shuddering like a beaten man as the familiar, sickening dread builds. You can feel it growing, uncoiling as a great beast from slumber as it tears your insides apart. Slowly, methodically, inexorably, it claims you, claws digging into your lungs, shredding them as your breaths grow short and shallow. It burrows up through you, gripping your heart and squeezing. You make a noise that is neither a groan nor a gasp, but a painful mix of the two as your heart leaps fearfully in your chest. Your hand is shaking as you lift it to your face, covering your eyes. The thing inside you presses on, settling in your throat in the guise of a scream that you will never let lose. You can hear it in your mind, like the broken cry of a child, full of fear and helpless confusion. You swallow hard, clinging to the sound of silence. The day you utter that cry is the day you have lost.</p>
<p>Time passes slowly at the apex of your suffering, each moment stretched to the breaking point until finally, mercifully, the beast recedes, withdrawing into the darkest recesses of your heart. Your movements are stiff and wearied when you are once again in control of yourself, violent shaking reduced to little more than tremors and aches. You rise from your place, forcing yourself to the closet. Even the act of dressing yourself is a struggle, but you have not sunk so low that you will let yourself rest in clothes filthy from the day’s work. But the task uses what little energy you had left, and you do not make it to the bed. You rest instead against the wall, staring off into some middle distance, as though you could see the monsters that prowl within your mind. At long last, consciousness ebbs away like the tide, and you submit yourself sleep.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>